Slave World (14 page)

It was well past one in the morning standard time, when Burke trudged through his front door. On some occasions, as with tonight if his job demanded late hours, Donna would wait up for him regardless of the time. She just wouldn’t understand the reason why, given her current mental state, if he didn’t stop by and see her at least briefly.

Burke set his sunglasses on a ledge by the door, stripping off his shirt encrusted with the white residue of excessive sweat. It went into a small bin along with the remainder of his clothes to await washing. Naked, he entered the kitchen taking a liter-sized bottle of enhanced water from the fridge, emptying it in a series of deep gulps. “Damn that’s good,” he gasped wearily.

He wound his way effortlessly through the black interior of his home with a new bottle in hand. The optical enhancement package implanted in his eyes and visual cortex automatically compensated, dilating his pupils while amplifying what little ambient light there was, turning total darkness into daylight. Unfortunately, a glitch had developed in the system shortly after implantation. The hardware reacted inadequately to surface glare occasionally and extremely bright light more often than not. It was new technology at the time he’d been augmented, and due to the pressing course of the war, there hadn’t been time for it to go through a complete series of field-testing. Sometimes you had to take the good with the bad; it was an outstanding and highly versatile combat system, regardless of the unexpected design flaw. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only problem with the slew of radical and groundbreaking cybernetic upgrades inhabiting his body. It had taken a year and the sacrifice of 100,000 guinea pigs to figure them out before the entire project was scrapped.

Burke had seen the classified numbers. Margo, as well as himself, were members of a rare and diminishing breed, a fraternity of the damned in a way. Only a measly six percent of the Wolverine II augmented troops survived the Seth war. Officially, the numbers were much higher. Of that six percent only two percent of those were still currently alive, most dying from enhancement-related illness and side effects, according to the Federation Census Bureau. Actually, there were even fewer like Burke, maybe only a handful if he dared to guess.
We’d served our purpose though, if it hadn’t have been for us the war may have been lost.

He eased into his favorite C.O.C, or chill out chair, taking another long pull of water, nearly choking with an involuntary chuckle. “Fucking, Venom, I don’t believe it,” he whispered to the darkness. “After all these years, right out of the blue, one of the legendary heroes of that shitty war gets dropped in my lap as a slave.”

Going through her service record had been a sad, eye-opening experience to say the least.
I probably know more about her than she knows herself.
He’d already visually scanned and uploaded her entire personnel record into the 200-terabyte hard drive of his Command and Control CPU.

Home of record was Hattiesburg, Mississippi, American Confederation.
I wouldn’t have tagged her as an Earther, especially from the South; she hid her accent pretty well.
Next of kin was one Shea Lynn, mother, and Aurora Ann, younger sister. Father’s deceased, killed in an industrial accident. Her mother was currently receiving the monthly disability stipend she’d earned thanks to Fleet’s Research and Development screw-up.

Margo had spent three years at a teen counseling and rehab institution, and never graduated high school.
Strange, the vocational aptitude battery she’d taken to gain Fleet admission indicated an above average intelligence regardless, 76.7 percentile in fact.
She’d later earned her GED followed by a minor degree in Astro-Mechanics while at the academy.

A few problems with the authorities after leaving the group home at the age of 17 – drug possession, public intoxication, drunk and disorderly and indecent exposure. She also had six counts of intention to solicit prostitution in her record.
Jeez Margo, what the hell were you thinking?
She’d done a short stay at a government detox facility before joining Fleet. This is where her service record really started to get interesting.

Her psychological profile was a nightmare: acute Bi-polar disorder with self-destructive inclinations and a hyper-sexuality disorder, resulting in stage three Nymphomania and sexual dependency.
Well, that at least explains her sexual promiscuity.
In addition to being diagnosed with acute depression, she also has a severe separation anxiety towards male authority figures that resulted in an abandonment phobia, and a sleeping disorder.
A result of losing her father maybe?
Burke leaned back closing his eyes, remembering how she’d acted after the little scare those two jackass’s had played on her with the branding iron. He’d been stunned by the utter ferocity of her hold on him.

What a fucking mess, and most of it could have been taken care of with medication and a little psychotherapy if anyone had bothered to give a shit about her
. It didn’t help matters that Margo’s Delmark gene analysis had placed her in the lower band, indicating a ninety-five percent likelihood of inter-family gene spreading on her mother’s side.
She’d had the cards stacked against her before she was even born.

Fleet should have never taken her in that condition. She should have been admitted for some serious psychiatric help not dropped into a war zone.
Fucking bureaucrat dickheads.
Burke had seen troops under his command with half her problems redlined, removed from active duty, and sent on convalescent leave until they got their heads back on straight. At the time though, no one was exempt from the call of duty; Fleet was taking everyone from underage runaway’s with false identification to convicted felons that were offered amnesty in exchange for four years of military service. All it had taken for Margo to bypass the red tape of recruitment guidelines were three medical waivers she probably didn’t even know about.

As Burke read further into Margo’s file, he knew exactly why they’d taken her. She had some of the fastest hand-eye reaction and coordination time on record in over forty years of Fleet aviation history. She happened to be the recipient of a rare neurological condition resulting in nearly double the synaptic receptors of a normal person. What made her all the more deadly, and that was exactly what she was, was her epinephrine levels shot off the chart when placed in a fight or flight situation. Problem was there was no telling which one would win out over the other. And, despite Margo’s inherently strong passive-submissive personality,
which explains her taking to the pony training so well
, she had an extremely high Combat and Aggression Quotient when her brain finally kicked into what Burke liked to call ‘machine mode’. Her brain patterns shifted to such an extreme it was like she became a totally different person, making Burke look like a peace activist in comparison.
Yet another result of the bipolarism maybe?
When you combined that with her abnormally high reaction speed, the massive adrenaline dump to her system, and a reflex booster enhancement on top of that.
She’s a goddamn one-woman slaughterhouse when the shit hits the fan.
No wonder she was one of the best pilots in Fleet.

Things made a lot more sense now, he thought sadly, and why’d she’d given up what would have normally been an outstanding career on the fast track within the military hierarchy. Margo had been decorated “for valor above and beyond”, nearly as many times as he had in a fraction of the time. She was only one of three surviving recipients of the Fleet Opal Starburst for Heroism after the Target fiasco. Burke already knew she was tough, you had to be to survive as long as she did, but if you stop to consider all the other shit she had to deal with on top of that
? She’s as tough as nails when it comes down to it.

Burke took another sip of water as visions of Margo danced pleasantly through his dimming mind.
Well,
she’s still my hero at least; I’d be dead if not for her, and now she’s a slave, even worse than that, a fucking freak of nature
, he fumed bitterly. That son of a bitch Michael, it just wasn’t right what he’d done to her, or any of the other slaves for that matter. Burke knew all too well the fate that awaited his newest charge, due mainly in fact because of that damn remote.
Besides that, she’s beautiful now; she’ll become Michael’s favorite, no doubt about it.
And there’s nothing I can do to stop it!

The plastic bottle in his hand shattered, spraying water in an explosion of helpless rage. Burke fought to contain the surge of emotion threatening to burst forth like a volcanic eruption. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he felt the longing pull of rare attraction. After learning her identity and what she’d had to contend with in her screwed up life…

All he wanted to do was hold her in his arms again as he did in the hallway, and tell her everything would be all right for a change, but that wasn’t where his desire for her stopped. Tonight, during her training, it had been a constant battle of diminishing willpower to hide his feelings from her. His professional façade had grown weaker, nearly collapsing in broken shards, when he’d removed her gear for turn in. It was a new and frightening experience for someone that valued personal control and self-restraint above all else.

It was pointless to even think that something would come to pass between them. She belonged to Michael, and Burke couldn’t take the chance of being forcibly booted off Slave World for Donna’s sake. He couldn’t leave her unprotected to Michael’s cruel and twisted sexual exploit ever again.
So I have to leave Margo to it, instead? Where’s the fucking justice in that?

It didn’t help matters that Margo was attracted to him as well; a blind man could have spotted it in a minute. It swirled in the depths of her eyes when she looked at him, resonating through the air itself as her body called out to him. Burke slowly brought the fingers of his left hand to his nose, sniffing lightly. They’d inadvertently slid across the steaming slit between her legs while removing her harness. Just the faint, lingering residue of her sex made his cock swell in forlorn hope.
How long has it been since I’ve been with a woman? Five years at least, not since coming here at any rate.

“It figures,” Burke growled with ironic despondency. “I finally find a woman I actually like, that I enjoy being around,
and
I’m attracted to, and I can’t have her.”
At least I can call her mine during training time, if nothing else.

There was always hope though, something may present itself, and Burke wasn’t one to give up without a fight. The fleeting idea of trying to purchase her from Michael, of winning her freedom briefly came to mind. There was no way in hell Michael would part with her for any amount of money though, not after getting a taste of her willing surrender to his sexual perversion. Burke had seen the auction footage, the same as Michael had.

He gazed down at his throbbing erection in the darkness, leaking with seldom-felt want after so long. He knew what he’d have to do now despite his shameful aversion to it. He wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise. With a resigned breath he stood, going to his bedroom accepting the inevitable. The model K Ultra-Vag, manufactured by Bio-Pleasure Industries, lay nestled under an assortment of precisely folded clothes in one of his dresser drawers. It had been his only form of release for years now, when the urge became too strong to ignore any longer. It still made Burke feel dirty whenever he used it to relieve the physical weakness of his body.

He propped himself up in bed with the foot long oval masturbator, switching it on, setting the controls for minimum stimulation. He didn’t want it to end too quickly, not this time. With a shallow breath and a muted gulp, he slid the rippled vagina-like opening down the length of his hungry cock. It was tight and moist, gripping him with warm synthetic flesh that made him jerk euphorically in response.

I wonder if this is what Margo feels like. No, nothing could ever hope to rival that sensation. Why didn’t I have the courage to speak with you in the service?
He said sadly to the image of Margo’s smiling face that quickly grew into a vision of imaginary, yet passionate lovemaking. Not surprisingly it was the old Margo, the real Margo, before she became a genetically altered pony, that he held in his arms. He kissed her imperfect lips while his hands roamed unhindered across her all natural body, painstakingly exploring it inch by delectable inch. The internal workings of the machine stroked Burke hesitantly, shyly, building into a slow steady rhythm of simulated embrace. Despite the lowest setting on his masturbator, Burke came within minutes.